X-Men Legends

"An extremely fun game wether you're an X-Men fan or not."

Activision has been enjoying success with Spider-Man 2 the game and have decided to branch off with X-Men, but can they make it just as good?

Story 8/10
The story in X-Men Legends is an original one written for the game. With Magneto locked away, Mystique and the Brotherhood of Mutants are on their own and trying to cause havoc for the world and our uncanny X-Men. After a young girl named Alison Crestmere is discovered to be a mutant, Mystique plans to kidnap her and almost succeeds if it weren't for Wolverine's interruption. Now with Alison under the roof of the Xavier Institute for the Gifted Youngsters, the X-Men plan to stop whatever the Brotherhood have up their sleeve and try to discover why they want Alison so much.

Graphics 8/10
X-Men Legends uses both 3-D and cell shaded graphics to run the game. The landscapes are 3-D while all the characters are cell shaded. The game is very aesthetically pleasing. The animation while fighting is very smooth with no slowdown or lag to holdup the action. Some bosses do particular attacks and make everything go Matrix style which has been overdone in both games and movies in recent years in my opinion but it's still cool none-the-less.

Gameplay 10/10
Legends is all about gameplay and it does a very good job at it. While fighting, you have your basic light and heavy attacks by hitting X and Circle. Hitting them in certain orders will result in different combos. You also have more damaging special moves you learn by leveling up your characters in the main game and in the Danger Room which you can use to practice and earn cool stuff. Specials are executed by pressing R2, which will bring up an icon in the upper left corner of the screen with all the Square, X, Circle, and Triangle buttons. Pressing one of the corresponding buttons will execute the move that is assigned to it. X is your default attack you have from the beginning. More powerful moves are learned counter-clockwise with each being more powerful than the last and Circle being the most powerful special move. The stages are long as well, making for a long game, which I myself enjoy. The environment in the game is also destroyable. If you can touch it, you can break it. After big fight, it'll look like a bomb went off which is cool since the X-Men tend to tear stuff up when they run about. Destroying things voluntarily is also a wise idea sine destroyed items can drop Heath or Tech Bits which you use you use to buy supplies and revive characters if they happen to get KO'd in battle. You control 4 X-Men at one time and can switch between them at any time. When you reach an Xtraction Point, which you use to save your game, you can switch your team with any other X-Men you've unlocked (15 total) and revive ones that have been KO'd. When not fighting evil, you get to cruise around the X-Mansion as Alison and talk to X-Men and such and view FMVs, unlocked Load Screens, concept art, and more. You just have to do it yourself to see the awesomeness.

Audio 9/10
The music in the game is okay. Not really anything to be impressed by but the voice acting is superb. Activision hired professional voice actors for the game. You may recognize some as anime and American cartoon voice actors like Dave Lucas who voiced Spike Spiegel and Roger Smith in the dubbed versions of Cowboy Bebop and Big-O respectively. Listen to other characters and see if you can guess who did their voices. It's a fun min-game of sorts.

Difficulty 7/10
The game is simple in the beginning, but as you progress, bosses and grunt villains get harder to beat. Same goes for Danger Room training programs. It keeps the game interesting since you can't mow down everyone and you actually have to fight them and use teamwork. The difficulty is just right.

Replayability 9/10
The game has a lot of cool unlockables which you'll want to get all of. Completing all the Danger Room programs is fun too along with finding them in the game with the other extras. The game is just plain fun as well, which will make you want to play it through on more than one occasion.

Rent or Buy? Definite buy for X-Men fans. Rent for anyone else which I believe will result in a buy. The game is just to fun to pass up. Legends is worthy of its $49.99 price tag.

Overall 9/10
A great game worthy of attention but it's not getting as much as it should.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/02/04